Piano "Magnetic Resonator Piano" which got a new tone that echoes strings with electromagnet

The sound of a piano called "pawn" is created by hitting a string by a part called a hammer. Its principle has been inherited without any change since the early piano was born in the 18th century, but the newly developed "Magnetic Resonator Piano(MRP: Magnetic Resonance Piano) "is a device that realizes the sound of a piano that could not exist in the past by borrowing the power of electricity and magnetic force.

Magnetic Resonator Piano | Music. Entertainment. Technology
http://music.ece.drexel.edu/research/mrp

It was set on the pianoMRP systemThe whole picture of. It is a "hybrid acoustic-electronic instrument" that uses a general grand piano as it is and places the device thereon. A computer for control is placed next to the piano and it is a system that controls the device based on the performance of the player.


The following notation best expresses the features of this device. It is a musical instrument that makes possible the change of performance and tone which can not be done with ordinary piano which gradually increases (crescendo) the sound which started with piano (weakly), raises it to Forte (strong), and returns it to the piano.


It is possible to see in the movie below how the actual playing is done. You can see how various tones are generated depending on how you play the keyboard.

Continuous note shaping on the acoustic piano - YouTube


"Pawn ... Fuwa ~ ~" MRP which plays the impossible tone in ordinary piano. On the keyboard part, you can read the movement of the keyboard with reflection of light "MOOG PianoBar"The device based on it is installed, it converts the performance into a digital signal and sends it to the computer.


An electromagnet is placed on the string of the piano and it is designed to apply a force to vibrate the string.


The computer processes the player's performance and controls the power of the electromagnet. Since PianoBar scans the movement of the keyboard 600 times per second, it is possible to faithfully reproduce the strength and quantity of knocking the keyboard.


Crescendo from the silence state which can not be an ordinary piano ......


It also supports pitch bend that changes the pitch smoothly. However, the bend width is not so wide.


It is also possible to apply vibrato using pitch bend. This is also a tricky impossible on ordinary pianos.


It sounds like a smooth sound like a synthesizer, but this sound is all recorded with a microphone from the piano. I am amazed by the gap between the appearance of the piano and the sound emission.


Here is the graph comparing the actual sound output. Even compared with the original sound, you can see that the sound driven by electromagnetic force contains almost the same sound component.


A device called "actuator" which gives vibration to the strings. It does not do mechanical movement like so-called actuators, the built-in coil generates the electromagnetic force of the frequency matching the string of each string, so that the string resonates with this and the sound is sounded That's why. This mechanism was developed for guitarEBowYaFernandez SustainerIt can be said that it is similar.


Since the real piano is used as it is, it is also possible to produce the original tone of the piano by strengthening the touch of the keyboard. In the following movie, you can see how you are performing differently using MRP of faded tone and general piano tone.

Magnetic resonator piano keyboard demo - YouTube


In MRP, it is also possible to input performance from an external keyboard or the like. The following movie contains a state of performance of a combination of piano and keyboard.

Magnetic resonator piano demo - YouTube


A piano who is a member of "bowed string instrument" which hits a string with a hammer has the characteristic that the sound volume decays over time, and this characteristic is one which no one could overturn for over 300 years since the piano was born . The present invention of "Magnetic Resonator Piano" seems to be said to be a musical instrument which can override common sense of piano so far.


◆ bonus
In addition, the Beatles have challenged the characteristics of such a piano. As you can hear from around 4/21 / second of the following movie, at the ending of masterpiece "A · Day in the Life", as the tone of the piano is attenuatedOperate the mixer so that it sounds longerEditing has been done, so that you hear the sound for more than 30 seconds.

The Beatles - A Day in the Life - YouTube